The Fitzrovia Chapel is proud to present Furniture World, a new film and installation by artist Sam Keelan
DATES
TIME
Sunday 09 August 12pm to 5pm (private view 5.30pm to 7.30pm)
Monday 10 August 11am to 6pm
Tuesday 11 August 11am to 6pm
Wednesday 12 August 11am to 5pm
The Fitzrovia Chapel is proud to present Furniture World, a new film and installation by artist Sam Keelan. Keelan says:
“I use my work to tell absurdist narratives, drawing on the aesthetics and ideas associated with a collectively imagined English middle class.
This is primarily explored through moving images, photography, and installation. I focus on distorting prevalent notions of this socioeconomic group, using familiar locations, activities, and ideologies as entry points to explore themes of comfort, ownership, and loneliness. By twisting and exaggerating these topics, my work offers a contrasting perspective on the domestic mundane, one that reveals how such constructs can quietly foster alienation and allow the dehumanisation of ourselves and others to seep into increasingly atomised spaces.
In my recent work, I’ve pushed these themes to a literal extreme by using costuming to transform performers into human object hybrids that embody objects tied to middle class nostalgia. These doppelgängers (part uncanny, part humorous) are then reinserted into the original contexts of the objects they mimic, performing their functions in a surreal way that invites reinterpretation of the things we accept as innate or ordinary from within our own homes.
Furniture World is a film about a man whose body is merged with a netted curtain. Pleated and layered strips of lace curtain are tiered over his torso and across his arms. His head and neck are similarly covered by a pleated lace hood that completely obscures his face. His legs and feet are the only parts that remain exposed. Retractable golden curtain poles extend from each arm, then cross behind his back to hold his arms rigidly outstretched, as if fixed in place between 9 and 3 o’clock. From these poles hang large netted curtains that fall straight down behind him, gathering on the floor and partially obscuring whatever unfolds in the rooms behind him.
ABOUT
Sam Keelan was born in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire in 1992. He graduated from Wimbledon College of Art in 2015 and the Royal Academy of Arts postgraduate programme in 2019. He lives and works in London.
Accessability
Outside the Chapel, there are two steps, which have a built-in wheelchair lift. The Chapel is wheelchair accessible. The majority is on one level, and there is a ramp that can be used to access the chancel (altar area). We have a fully accessible toilet. View more accessibility information
OUR CULTURAL PROGRAMME
Since 2016, we have collaborated with artists, curators, and institutions to present a programme of exhibitions that often reflects our history as the chapel for the Middlesex Hospital.
